Team North Smashes Stock Bottom End 5.3 Record in Vegas

Most of the time, when a record is broken, especially one that’s existed for years and has quite a large number of cars take shots at it each year, the incremental improvements are a made at least 2 digits to the right of the decimal point. If a record that’s been chased for nearly 15 years gets broken by more than a tenth, people tend to sit up and take notice.

Knowing that, imaging the shockwave that rippled through the LS community when the record for the SBE (stock bottom end) 5.3 LS engine fell by over half a second! Thankfully, Hans from Free Life Films was there to capture the action and share it with us.

If you think about the number of stock bottom end 5.3 liter LS engines out there that have been crammed with air by either superchargers or turbochargers or plumbed completely full of nitrous to see just how quick the owner can go without bothering to even pull the oil pan off the engine. The heads have only had the valve covers pulled to upgrade the valve springs to handle the 40 PSI of boost being stuffed into the throttle body by the monster 91mm Garrett turbocharger. Other than that, this engine is exactly the way it came out of what was most likely a Silverado that your uncle drove back and forth to the plant and to the fishing hole each weekend.

Team North came together and put the combination together and dropped it into the engine compartment of John Cuglietta’s Pro Stock Truck-style S10 and headed down to Las Vegas for the thirteenth Street Car Super Nationals, where John piloted the truck to a run just two hundredths off the record while coasting through the last half of the track. Knowing they were about to light up the scoreboards and electrify the 5.3 world, Team North rolled to the lines with a quiet confidence, knowing if Cuglietta made a good A-to-B pass the record was theirs for the taking. Not only did he break it, he absolutely demolished it, knocking over five tenths off of the old 7.72 record with a 7.18 elapsed time at over 190 mph, which also raised the MPH record by some sixteen miles per hour. And just like that, the game changed in the 5.3 world, so we’ll have to see if anybody else is able to step up and try to knock Team North off the throne.